Our battle is not against flesh and blood, the Bible tells us. Unfortunately too many Christians have reduced that to a meaningless catchphrase that gives them license to say and do any number of hurtful things since, after all, they're simply challenging the evil forces at work behind the scenes and not the people their venomous attacks actually wound. But in the end they fool only themselves, as victims and bystanders alike turn away from the church by the thousands.
That mentality is certainly in evidence in the war over Christmas. Even when I was a loyal rank-and-file evangelical I wasn't completely sold on the need to force non-Christians to observe our holidays, though that's the kind of doubt one is careful to admit only behind closed doors, and only to certain people.
James Hanley has masterfully pulled apart an email that continues to make the rounds in evangelical circles (and that I've received at least once from a no doubt sincere friend). The alarmism and fear-mongering contained in the original message is pure propaganda of the sort far too seldom questioned by the choir it preaches to.
On a slightly different note, Brady from Some Guys are Normal has written a rebuttal to Maggie Gallagher's recent piece on why gay marriage isn't inevitable. I hesitate to call anything inevitable, given the twists and turns that human history has taken over the millennia, but Gallagher's reasoning is so flimsy it causes me to wonder (not for the first time) how she ever rose to a position of prominence in the "traditional marriage" movement to begin with. But that, I suppose, is just one more example of the sort of thing that comes from the church abandoning its real mission to declare war on the culture it finds itself in and the people it's supposed to be showing God's love.
On an even more tangential note, these guys make an interesting point. It's not one I'd base any arguments on, but it's good for a smile or two...
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